


This House of Swords

by bazmahtaz



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Canonical Rape/Non-con, Culture Shock, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Fog Warriors, Fog warrior culture, Past Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:15:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23150818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bazmahtaz/pseuds/bazmahtaz
Summary: Abandoned by his Master on the shores of Seheron, Fenris is injured and alone. Found by a tribe of Fog Warriors with their own troubles to bear, he learns that not all chains are made of steel.This story contains depictions of physical, sexual and emotional abuse, slavery, and the aftermath as faced by survivors. Mind your triggers.
Relationships: Fenris/Fog Warrior(s), Fenris/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 9





	1. The Wheel of Fortune

The Ink dark waves of the Nocen sea rocked the ship against the horizon, carrying it ever southwards under howling winds and a flashing sky that illuminated the hull in guttering silhouettes.

They had been given a chance to escape when the storm hit. The Qunari dreadnoughts, unable to pursue them through the tall waves and whipping wind, had left an opening for the surviving members of the regiment to evacuate. The foreign warships were built for aggression, not speed, and the Tevinter frigate easily outstripped them into the waiting bay with it's passengers safely tucked below decks.

And without Fenris.

The ship had already been near full to bursting when he and his Master had arrived at the stretch of beach where a single rowboat remained, ready to depart. There had been no room to accommodate a slave, even one so valuable as Fenris. His Master had protested, threatening the boat's pilot with all manner of pain, but the man had brokered no argument, and threatened to maroon them both.

Fenris bled sluggishly around the arrows lodged in his body, one between his ribs, just below his breastplate, and two jammed into his shoulder. The blood ran in slow rivulets, following the trails left by the rain, and stained the weedy sand where he had finally fallen to his knees in breathless exhaustion. 

His master was safe, and he would return for Fenris when able. It was now Fenris’ duty to survive long enough to allow it. 

His breathing hitched around the burning agony of his wounds, and he felt the pain spiral to dizzying heights when he closed his fist around the solid shaft of the one buried into his torso. He exhaled hard, went to tug the thing out, and balked at the last moment with a frustrated groan. 

It was not his first time having an arrow removed from his flesh, he knew what pain it would bring, but he was not usually the one who had to perform the procedure. His Master had a slave for that, trained as a surgeon and physic for the household. She, and many others, had been killed in the initial attack when the Qunari had blasted apart the western wall of their settlement and poured through the smoking gap like an autumn flood. Fenris had watched her eyes go blank when a spear had been flung through her torso, pinning her corpse to the ground in a bloodied heap.

The settlement was little more than a husked ruin in the distance now, occupied by the enemy and the newly dead. Fenris could not return there, but if he moved East following the shore, he estimated that he would make it to the nearest Tevinter holding by nightfall tomorrow. 

But first he needed to remove the arrows, or the pain would have him collapsing again long before he made it to safety. He inhaled slowly, wincing at the burning that seemed to course through him, then exhaled as completely as he could, and grabbed, and yanked.

His agonized scream couldn't echo far across the choppy waters or into the dense jungle. The wind itself seemed to eat the sound even as it left his mouth, but still he bit his own tongue to try and stifle it quickly. There was no course for him but a slow and painful death if he was discovered by the Qunari. 

It took a moment for the world to stop spinning, and when Fenris finally looked down he nearly cried out again in frustration. He had merely succeeded in coaxing a gush of blood from the wound where the arrow remained lodged like a blackened branch jammed into his flesh. 

He would have to pull again.

He grit his teeth, blew out a serrated breath from between them in a low hiss. His fingers shook as he grabbed the thing once more.

Fenris pulled, and his body lurched and his vision went white with the purest, pulsing torment he had experienced since his master had marked his flesh with lyrium. He felt the arrow rip free, felt the gush of hot blood down his front, and the bile rise in his throat before feeling his body drop like a stone to the ground.

Too late, he realized his mistake: the arrow had been stoppering the blood that now flowed freely from his side, soaking the wet sand in scarlet. He could feel himself losing grip on consciousness, feel the cold creep of his own death coming to claim him.

On the horizon, the Tevinter frigate had nearly disappeared into the distance, the promise of rescue fading with it. He felt a small flicker of relief at that, at being spared the further humiliations and abuses of his Master's whims. If he was to die here, would he find freedom in some afterlife? 

He closed his eyes and exhaled, and let the world fade into nothingness.

* * *

Fenris’ body felt like a monument to pain itself, aching and exhausted from his closed eyes to the tips of his very toes. The scent of strong alcohol even burned his nostrils when he took a careful breath, tinged with something herbal. Around him he could hear the sounds of the Seheron jungle, beasts calling to each other in the trees from somewhere above. His whole head felt stuffed with lead weights, and his limbs fared little better when he attempted to maneuver them.

“ _ Atchch _ !” 

A woman's voice startled him and he forced his eyes open. A string of words he couldn't understand but for their scolding tone tumbling from her as she approached him where he lay: a wooden cot under the canopy of some kind of large tent. 

She was a heavyset human with brown skin and hair bleached a pale yellow, tied away from her face in thick braids that fell down her back behind the binding of a grey kerchief. Her dark brows were drawn together in irritation as she moved to his side with a businesslike speed and wrapped her thick fingers around his wrist to return it to its resting place. Another string of incomprehensible foreign gibberish and she pointed at his shoulder and belly with an almond-shaped nail.

“I don't understand you.” he croaked in trader's tongue, only to receive a an exasperated eye-roll of someone long used to the ignorance of others.

“You,” she said in a heavy, guttural accent. “Stay. We find you…” she gesticulated with her fingers, making a pinching motion with little space between her thumb and index “dead.”

Fenris exhaled hard through his nose. Brain filling with questions: Who was the “We” she referred to? She was not speaking Qunlat, he'd heard enough of that language to have recognized it, even if he wouldn't understand it. They had not tied or chained him to his cot, though, at his present health it would not matter if they had. Where was he? Where were his armor and his sword? 

If his master were to discover them missing the price would be beaten out of Fenris's flesh with extreme prejudice.

The woman shoved her fingers against the join of his neck, just below his ear, where she could feel for his pulse. He attempted to jerk out of the way, but he lacked the strength for even that, moreso when she simply tutted and held him in place before placing her hand on his forehead. 

“I check infection.” she said in her broken Common, seemingly in response to his protests, only interrupted when another voice came from the tent flap, speaking the same language as before. 

The man who stepped through was massive, with skin painted with a ghostly white paste and a head shaved bald around a pair of broken horns. He carried a staff as tall as he was, carved from some kind of pale wood into the scaled body of a serpent. His robes were a silvery grey, simple, and short enough to allow his legs a freedom of movement no mage of Tevinter would ever stoop to replicate.

The Qunari chained their mages and kept them under tight control, treating them as living weapons and even sewing their mouths closed. They saw any born with magic as inherently dangerous.  _ Saarebas,  _ they called them; dangerous things.

This man, while obviously Qunari by heritage, lacked a collar entirely, and spoke with the authority of a Tevinter magister as he addressed the woman. She nodded her head as he spoke again, and then released Fenris and stepped aside for the mage's inspection.

“Rua here says you speak the trader's tongue.” His voice was rough, and heavily accented, but he made himself understood easily enough.

Fenris nodded.

“Good.” the man said “I am Saba, you are amongst my family here. I ask that you do not attempt to engage in violence so long as you remain, I do not wish to kill you.” his tone was conversational, and he sat his large body on a stool next to the cot that allowed him to more easily meet Fenris’ eye.

“I…where am I?” Fenris’ voice was hoarse still, Saba motioned to the woman - Rua- with the hand not holding his staff and was handed a wooden cup, which he lifted to Fenris’ mouth.

“We are a tribe of Fog Warriors.” Saba said, allowing Fenris the small dignity of levering his own head to drink from the proffered cup. He had heard of Saba's people, of course, anyone who had been on Seheron for any length of time knew of the native rebels who weaved the island's mists into a cloak that covered their movements and allowed them to attack virtually unseen. 

Another voice from behind Saba spoke in their language, sounding impatient. Rua tutted again, this time in response to whatever the newcomer had said, and Saba sighed through his nose, turning in such a way that allowed Fenris to glimpse the stranger.

A woman stood with her arms crossed, nearly blending in with the tent's pale canvas with her painted skin and braided ash-blonde hair. Even the leather breastplate and boots she wore had been painted with a kind of matte gesso that matched the plain linen of her clothes. The only hint of colour on her person was the startling shade of cobalt blue that made up her eyes, which were fixed on Fenris like he was a particularly unpleasant insect.

“Chandra, do not be rude.” Saba chided, “You will shame us with your temper.”

The woman “tsk"ed softly and rolled her vivid eyes. “I see no reason to entertain a Tevinter spy.” 

“And what would they spy on, my daughter? Happy families and my tired old bones?” Saba patted his own knee in emphasis, making her frown deepen. “He is injured, and alone. We shall heal him and then return him to his people.”

She bristled, shoulders nearly meeting her (pointed, when Fenris could make them out against the backdrop of hair and canvas) ears and said something else in their language before turning away and storming out, Rua following on the woman's heels with a concerned look on her face. Saba sighed again, and turned his attention back to Fenris with a wan smile. “Forgive my daughter, she is suspicious and as stubborn as a boar.”

Fenris nodded, and privately agreed with her paranoia. It was unwise to bring an enemy into your camp, no matter how injured they were. Saba must have read the thought on his face somehow, the large man smiled and shook his horned head. “I must be old indeed if all of these young people seem to think me lost to reason.”

“I will admit that I fail to see the wisdom in healing your enemy and returning him to his camp.” Fenris replied.

“You assume I think you are my enemy.”

“I am Tevinter-”

“You are  _ of _ Tevinter, yes, but I fail to see how that makes you anything other than simply foreign.” Saba replied with a gentle smile “I have already told you I will protect my family if need be.”

Fenris, furrowed his brow, examining Saba's words and finding no lie in them. “I- Thank you.”

“No thanks needed. I shall leave you to rest.” He stood, collecting his staff and placing the cup of water next to the cot. “Ah, though I have forgotten to ask your name. Apologies.”

He hesitates briefly, considers giving a fake, but for what? His appearance alone would reveal his identity to anyone who knew of him, so he replies truthfully and receives a smile and nod in thanks .


	2. The Moon

He was laid flat on his back, covered to the chest by a plain woven blanket and looking no less the dangerous invader, even with new bandages and the familiar scent her people's medicines clouding the room. 

On the beach, at a distance, Chandra had seen pale hair and thought him to be one of her own people. His dark clothes and unpainted skin had given him away when they had approached; no fog warrior left camp without camouflaging themselves to blend in with the mists of their fog dancer. Her soft-hearted father had still chosen to save the foreigner, to bring him amongst their people to be healed and then returned to his own. 

Did he not remember how foreign invaders slaughtered their people? Did he not witness the same murders that had taken place not a season past? Their culture was being driven to the brink of extinction, their families terrorized, and their land stolen by the very people who had brought this interloper to Seheron, and her father still sought to save him! 

So he could return with an army at his back? No.

Slitting his throat would be too obvious, and too messy, blood was difficult to clean in such large amounts. She could poison him, any number of herbs and extracts in the clinic could kill him in a high enough dose, but Rua would know the signs of poisoning and Chandra would still fall suspect. She could set his bed on fire to make any of those look like an accident, but they would lose the medical tent, and they were far too low on materials to build another or replace valuable medicine stores.

She also didn't trust her ability to muster a flame, not after… everything. And she had no flint.

She  _ wished  _ she could strangle him. Wrap her fingers around his marked throat and squeeze until his eyes bulged and his face turned a sickly bruised shade… but that would leave her handprints all over her crime, literally, and only serve to remind her of the last person she had seen strangled to death…

No, she would need to smother him. An extra pillow lay on top of a pile of unused linens in the corner, and with a deep breath, Chandra moved from the doorway to claim the unassuming cushion; fingers wrapping around the woven fabric with purpose. 

She turned, looking at the Tevinter once again and committing his face to memory. Pale hair and thick dark brows, unpainted dark skin. Straight nosed and square jawed, marked with raised silvery lines that curled up his throat and over his chin. She was curious enough to wonder at their purpose, at their significance to this savage culture that sought to erase her own, but not enough to wish to ever speak to the monster that lay amongst her people as they slept.

So she lifted the pillow above his head…

And then pushed it down against his face with all her might, fingers covering where his mouth and nose lay beneath the fabric and soft flax stuffing.

His thrashing was immediate, and violent, nearly bucking her off of him until she brought her knee against his injured side. There was a muffled cry of pain, and she jumped onto the sturdy cot, pinning his hips with her own and bracing herself to outlast his struggling. It was only a moment or so before his hands came up and wrapped around her wrists like a vice. Though his one arm was weak, and did little more than squeeze at her bones ineffectually, the other was surprisingly fit and managed to wrench her hand to the side enough for him to turn his head beneath the pillow and take a wheezing breath beneath her. 

There was a sudden flash of blue-white light, and she felt herself lose all sense of gravity as she was flung heavily to the ground. The world spun and the light had left her blind, and she felt rather than saw him descend on her and place a rough, calloused, hand around her throat. 

Panic filled her, flashes of her mother's face and red handprints on white cloth and white painted skin. The sound of choking and distant screams and blue eyes begging and terrified and the smell of burning, burning jungle, burning canvas, burning flesh-

Chandra thrashed against him with kicking feet and clawing fingers. Her body crackled with cold, pins and needles down her arms and released a burst of energy that finally connected with something that made his grip slacken enough that she could scrabble away and reach for her hunting knife, brandishing it at the spotty darkness with her back against the tent wall. 

The room was silent but for their mutual laboured breathing and the night creatures outside. She could hear her own heartbeat in her ears as well, hammering in fear, and burning against her breastbone. 

“You make a poor assassin.” The man wheezed between gulps of air. “You cannot flinch when you kill a man. You will show your weakness, and he will exploit it.”

“I have killed men before!” Chandra hissed into the darkness.

“Scouts or rank and file soldiers, I imagine, and from a distance.”

She cursed at him in her own language then. She didn't wish to speak to this interloper, and she certainly didn't want his advice. “So says the murderer!”

He was silent for a long moment, “Yes.” he said, simply. 

She clenched her fist around the knife, vision slowly crawling back enough that she could distinguish his huddled shape on the floor, a hand against his injured side and eyes on her like he was waiting for her to make the final strike. Like he had no fear of her, and no fear of death. 

It was unacceptable.

She bit her lip, staring back through the darkness and considering. She could make him fear her! Make his death slow and painful and end him so thoroughly that he would leave no trace or memory in the fade or the waking realm. Her rage and her contempt for this intruder were physical in their intensity, boiling her blood and gnawing at her bones like wolves. If the foreigners thought her people to be savage, she would earn the definition. 

“I'm going to kill you, Tevinter.” she said.

“Get it over with.”

She stood, heart still pounding beneath her ribs, fingers wrapped around the wooden hilt of her blade with practiced familiarity. She could throw it and catch his windpipe from across the room, but instead she took a step closer, and then another, until she stood in front of him, close enough to touch. 

His eyes were green, framed by black lashes and sharp cheekbones. He was maybe a decade her senior at most, and scarred from chest to fingers with fine, even, lines. His hair was naturally white, not bleached or dyed like many of her people's, and only just long enough to meet his chin. 

The knife was heavy in her palm, familiar, and she had killed with it before.

Scouts. Rank and file soldiers. At a distance.

His accuracy burned her.

She inhaled deeply, around the sting of failure, and glared down at him. He was not looking at her, but at the floor between his knees, or at her boots, she couldn't be sure.

“When you are well.” she said “Then I shall kill you in a manner that will honour me.”

She sheathed the blade and walked away.

____

  
  


He slept often, his wariness not acute enough to prevent his slowly healing body from drifting in and out of consciousness, even despite the recent attempt on his life. Sometimes Rua was present, prodding him with the efficiency of a well trained physician and none of the gentleness. She encouraged him to engage in slow exercises in his bed, using her limited common and enthusiastic demonstration skills to show him how to slowly rotate his arm and bend his torso in ways that burned and ached but nonetheless made him feel less like he was wasting away. She fed him frequently, cooked meats and fruits and herbal concoctions, insisting he eat and take his medicine with the same aggressive care she did everything else. 

He spotted his would-be assassin passing by the tent whenever Rua tied the flap open to let the air in. Chandra, he was told, was the tribe's “Kei'alida” though he had no idea what that meant. Rua's explanation had involved a lot of gestures he could not parse, and she had given up when it was apparent that she was doing nothing more than making herself look ridiculous.

Fenris felt no great inclination to tell her about Chandra's attempt to smother him in his sleep, or her promise to kill him later, Rua might not understand him if he bothered to try.

Despite the woman’s eccentricities, she had Fenris on his feet again by the end of the week, though he was too frail at first to do more than walk the short distance from one end of the tent to the other before the pain in his side forced him to rest.

He was given clothes, grey linens that draped soft and airy over his body and made him nervous for their lack of armour. His only recollection of being without the reassuring weight of his breastplate and gauntlets was when he was either asleep or being punished, and currently he felt as though the whip was about to fall. His sword, as well, had been stored somewhere, Saba's trust apparently not extending to allowing a stranger a weapon in his camp. Suspicion, at least, was as familiar to Fenris as his own skin. 

When at last he found himself able to walk around the tent and stand for a length of time Rua determined sufficient, she declared that he was to “become useful” and guided him from the tent and across the camp.

Fenris counted nineteen tents, including the one he had been resting in, all made of the same waxed and bleached canvas arranged over branches stretched into long half-cylinders over raised wooden platforms. The camp itself was built surrounding a large, communal fire pit with an unoccupied spit at the center, and contained by large, flat, stones and a barrier of sand. Several young Fog Warriors sat around it, fletching arrows and laughing. Nearby, another pair were carving into the husks of some kind of spiny fruit and removing the innards into a large, wooden, bowl. There were people of all kinds meandering through the camp and going about their tasks. There were humans, of course, but elves had an unmistakable presence here, along with a smattering of dwarves and even Qunari. Some thirty strong who all seemed to be going about their tasks without a mind to their differences.

Saba, and his murderous daughter, were nowhere to be seen.

He was led to the largest tent, a communal eating space with many cushions smattered around a fire, smaller than the one outside, and venting smoke through a chimney cut into the canvas above it. A pair of identical Qunari girls stood with a human man who looked to be in his early forties, speaking quietly until they took notice of Rua. The healer said something to them quickly, then gestured at Fenris with an open palm. 

“This is Fenris.” she said, haltingly. “Fenris. This is Aban.” Rua pointed to one of the young Qunari “This is Asaara.” pointing to the second girl, “This is Hector.” and to the man. “They do plants.” Rua looked at all of them, seeming to seek approval for her stilted common, and at Hector's smile and nod she clapped her hands in satisfaction before leaving Fenris alone with his new guardians.

“She means we harvest the herbs for her to make into medicine.” One of the girls said, though he wasn't sure which, Aban maybe? “We aren't going far today, so she wants you to come with us.”

“She told me I was to make myself useful.” Fenris replied. 

“Sounds like our Rua.” Hector grinned. He spoke in a thicker accent than the other two, all hard consonants and flat vowels. “We should get to it while the sun is high.” 

\---

“Not Far” turned out to be a half-hour's walk into the jungle by way of a path that only the trio ahead of him seemed to be able to see. They did not travel quickly, Hector had a limp from an old injury and the twins seemed to enjoy meandering a little as they walked. They seemed to lack a sense of caution that Fenris would have expected of folk living so close to their enemies. 

“The hunters are patrolling.” Said Asaara, or Aban, when he asked if they should be more cautious. “The Tevinter don't dare get too close without a big group behind them, and we'll hear the Qunari coming from leagues away.” She mockingly stomped her way toward her sister growling something in Qunlat that made them both dissolve into peals of laughter that echoed through the jungle.

“Doesn't mean we won't scare off the game for the hunters, ladies. Let's keep it to a dull roar shall we?” Said Hector. 

They continued on until they reached a shallow ravine that cut its way across the floor of the jungle in an erratic zigzag. The banks were thick with the roots of trees that trailed into the water like enormous fingers, and between them lie clusters of deep red flowers atop floating leaves that grew like discs beneath them. Fenris mirrored the trio when they rested their baskets on a relatively flat portion of ground, and then lifted their trousers so that they sat above their knees.

“We want the roots, mostly, but the leaves are good for cooking with so grab those as well.” Said either Aban or Asaara. “Its easiest if you just nab the whole plant and toss it on the beach in a pile to sort through later.” 

Fenris followed them into the water, calf deep and muddy and pleasantly cool in the humidity of the day. The plants were dense, and easy enough to pull out of the gunk once he learned what to look for. He could reach down and grab where the roots were thickest and pull them up in clumps, in minutes he had a respectable pile growing behind him. Hector hummed as he worked, and the girls laughed with each other a bit further downstream. Fenris found a steady rhythm, and despite the dull ache in his side and arm he found the work to be almost satisfying. Simple, he thought. He could concentrate on the squish of mud beneath his toes and the woody tangle of roots between his fingers and the soft fragrance of the flowers that now permeated the air around him. There was a peace, here, and it was so novel that he almost let his paranoia slip away. 

Behind every peace in his life, there had been some trap or scheme or condition that would keep it from lasting. His Master needed him sharp, paranoid even, to the point of constant vigilance. He couldn't live with “Simple”. He had never known it. 

Fenris threw another plant onto the beach, listening to Hector's humming and the girls voices echoing between the trees. It wouldn't last, he knew, but he allowed himself a moment of contentment anyway.


	3. The Chariot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing in past tense is proving challenging. I'll probably miss mistakes now and then and I don't have a beta, so I apologize for any goofs.

“There is nothing for it, if the Qunari keep pushing South they will be on us by season's end.”

“Did we not choose this part of the jungle because of it's distance from the invaders? If we move any further South we'll be on the damned beach!” 

“We could always-”

Chandra pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes to fend off the encroaching headache. She had nothing to offer this meeting and the leaders were too polite to say it, and too traditional to allow her to leave. The Fog Dancer was always to be present at meetings of leadership even if…

Well, even if she had no real right to that title. 

She studied the map in the center of their circle, tracing the whorls the artist had painted to represent the sea with a distracted eye. Wooden discs had been placed to represent their people and the invading hordes, sporadic circles of white among a growing sea of red and black, and the symbol of a coiled snake marking their own camp, far to the west and south of the continent. A contingent of red discs sat poised to swallow them from the North. 

“-Under cover of the Fog, yes, we could.” Said the lead hunter, Neerav, summoning Chandra's attention. He looked at her, realizing his mistake, and then cast his eyes down in apology.

She could feel her face heat in shame beneath her paint and wished the earth would swallow her whole. Wished she still had the power to make it do so without risking the entire camp.

“Chandra has come a long way in her recovery. I believe she will soon be able to dance again.” Her father said with all the confidence she didn't share. 

Anandad, the tribe’s oldest and wisest elder, huffed. “We all grieve my granddaughter’s loss. Inaaya was precious to us all, but no good will come from rushing Chandra's sorrow at the loss of her mother.”

“Please do not speak of me as if I am not here.” Chandra, nearly snapped. It came out as a soft request that was lost amidst the renewed argument between the other four. 

Rua argued that they could contact the nearest band, the Spider tribe, and have them send one of their alchemists, but Neerav reminded her that it would take too long. Chandra's father maintained that he was confident in her abilities, with Anandad arguing that she needed more time to grieve. The only thing they all agreed on was that the camp needed to be moved, and that the safest way to move it was under the Fog's cover. 

Cover she was unable to provide.

Her mouth was a thin line and her hands were clenched into fists and the anxiety bubbling under her ribs was threatening to boil over. She felt like a fishing line with far too much tension, ready to snap under the weight of a fat catch as it thrashed beneath the water. It would be better to cut the reel than risk breaking the whole rod. 

She stood quickly on numb legs, apologizing in a haze even as she left the tent to a series of protests. Chandra nearly ran to the edge of camp, swallowing gulps of humid night air that did little to ease the drowning sensation that threatened to overwhelm her entire body. She kept moving, walking quickly into the darkness of the jungle, beyond the watch of their sentries where the noise of their camp faded and was replaced with the humming of insects and the call of night-dwelling animals. She walked until she was forced to stop and focus only on her shuddering breaths as they pushed in and out of her aching chest in painful, irregular, spasms. 

She felt the cold static buzz through her fingertips and fizzle out in jagged branches of frost that crackled across the earth around her like the roots of a tree. Silver where the fine shafts of moonlight touched them, they mocked her with her own lack of control, a physical reminder of her own impotence. 

In a fit of rage she flung her fist at the nearest tree with a frustrated cry, and felt soft bark part over her knuckles with a satisfying crack. Another hit and she dented the harder, stronger layer beneath and felt her skin split, a third and pain finally rang up her arm like a warning bell her knuckles leaving red stains against the white bark. 

She only stopped when her first and middle finger broke.

She cursed, feeling the anger and grief boil up from beneath her sternum again, and sank to the ground at the roots of the tree, leaning against it with her knees drawn up to her chest. 

The tantrum had been childish, and had only served to make her feel worse. Her father would give her that exhausted look of disappointment he seemed to wear all the time now, and Rua would scold her for wasting bandages. Anandad would remind her of her duty, of her mother's legacy.

A legacy she had already failed. A Fog Dancer with no talent for alchemy and no control over her magic. She already spent her nights hounded by demons and surrounded by spasmodic memories of the worst day of her life. Fire and screaming and her mother's blood soaked hair and purple face and a pair of hands squeezing-

Chandra sucked in a breath that wanted to be a sob.

She could end it now, if she wanted. She had her hunting knife. Better to do it now than risk possession when her inevitable weakness finally ended in disaster. 

“Coward.” she said, when she couldn't even bring herself to reach for the blade.

“You're a damned coward.”

____

Fenris awoke to the sound of something falling to the floor with a metallic clink, accompanied by foreign cursing and the scuffle of feet.

It took him a few moments to adjust to the dark, the shadowed figure of a woman was picking up a jar from where it had fallen to the floor, unbroken, her other hand tucked against her chest. 

It was a testament to the medicines Rua had given him that Fenris hadn't bolted awake, lyrium aglow, at the barest hint of noise. He had always been a light sleeper- all slaves were, lest they raise their Master's ire- but the mixture of buds and roots of several plants that the healer dosed him with at night was heady, and sent him into a deep and dreamless sleep for which he found himself strangely grateful.

Blinking away the sleep he saw Chandra, absent of most of her paint and armor and attempting to unstopper the jar one-handed. She cursed again, a word Hector had informed him was slang for dung, and the jar slipped from between her knees and rolled away from her again.

On a whim, Fenris reached down and caught it as it passed the cot. 

She cursed once more, one he didn't yet know the meaning of, and went to snatch the jar away from him. Fenris pulled it away, holding it off to the side and sitting up slowly, immediately missing the blackness of sleep.

“Trying to kill me again?”

She growled at that, stalking back to the desk and it's jars, scanning them. “I should. I told you I would kill you honorably, though. I do not break promises.” she shuffled a set of jars around, shoulders hunched in irritation. 

Fenris held up the jar, recognizing it as one whose contents Rua had smeared over his wounds before rebandaging him. It had a distinctive smell, a thick, sticky consistency, and made his whole side and shoulder feel cool and tingling after. He popped the cork off easily, and was treated to an equally cool glare from Chandra when he held it out to her without comment.

She took it, dipping her fingers into the paste and smearing it in thick globs over the opposite hand, hissing a breath through gritted teeth at the contact as she waited for the telltale sting of the concoction to ebb. Re-corking the jar, she exchanged it for a roll of bandages and a flattened wooden bar the length of her hand. Her eyes kept flashing over to where he sat, sleep-mussed and strangely curious, as she attempted to bandage the wound with her uninjured hand.

She failed. Twice. The stick shifting as she tried to secure it beneath her fingers, or the bandage slipping away from her. She growled in frustration, sounding every bit the savage Tevinter would have him believe she was, and she looked nearly ready to sweep her tools to the floor.

“You need help.” He said simply.

“I-!” she began to protest, then looked at her hand again, and back at Fenris. Her lips pressed into a line, and she looked to his hands for a long, considering moment, before thrusting her own toward him. Bandages and stick in one hand, balm-slick and broken knuckles in the other. “Any wrong move and I will cut you.” she pronounced, eyes narrowed. 

He made a noise of understanding, too muddled from his medicine and sleep to form a coherent reply. He simply took the tools from her hand, and copied what he had seen her attempt earlier: stick against the palm, beneath her two fingers, and bandages wrapped around her fingers to her wrist. Tighter, when she said so, and knotted at the back of her hand where it wouldn't irritate her. Other than her terse direction, it was a silent affair, her eyes fixed on him as he worked. Her hands were slender, elven, he thought when he ignored the swelling; though they were manicured in the dagger-like fashion of the Qunari, with thicker nails that grew into an almond shape. They were cool to the touch, and calloused from experience, and so very still between his own. She reminded him of nothing so much as one of the predatory cats he had seen on the island. Still, until she wasn't.

Chandra snatched her hand away when he was finished and returned her pilfered items to the storage cupboard. She turned to leave, paused…

“Thank you. Foreigner.”

And she left.

\---

The rain in Seheron was gentle for most of the year, pattering across the jungle canopy in fits and starts, but two weeks after his first outing with Hector and the twins the weather shifted and the camp was subject to a downpour unlike anything Fenris had ever seen.

The Fog Warriors seemed to take it in stride, letting the water pass beneath their tent platforms and digging ditches to help redirect the deluge from the cooking fire and communal tent. They could do nothing about the stifling humidity, however, or the cacophony of thunder and lightning that seemed to pause just long enough for Fenris to think the storm had passed before resuming its tirade.

For two days It filled the river until it flooded its banks and made the earth a spongy, muddy, mire. They didn't have to travel as far to reach the edge of the water, which had carried some of the red flowers with it, and caused the elfroot growing nearby to shoot up like weeds. The herbalists would wait for a break in the downpour and collect as much as they could before rushing back to camp once the sky opened up once more. Fenris found that he was soaked to the skin more often than not, but the rain was warm, and helped wash the heat from the encroaching summer from his body. 

He worked alongside Hector on the first sunny day in a fortnight, collecting elfroot on the bank while the twins dug up the flowers from the water around a bend in the river. They gossiped loudly enough that Fenris was positive they could be heard from camp, nattering on about who was sleeping with who, and which of the hunters was going to win some long standing bet about catching the most game. 

Common banter like theirs would have earned them both beatings if they lived in the imperium. Most slaves were not permitted to speak while they worked, at least not within earshot of the master's household. Fenris had seen a pair of girls the same age as the twins caned for whispering gossip where his Master's apprentice could overhear. Their backs had been stripped of skin, but they had been lucky their punishment had not been worse.

Fenris still found himself walking from the imagined cadence of familiar footsteps approaching him in the darkness. Rua had eased the dose of what medication kept him asleep at night, and his dreams had returned to him in kind. He found himself waking suddenly several times a night to imagined dangers. He dreamed of groping fingers and the electric buzz of magic scraping his flesh raw and woke sweating in a way he never had when he still lived in his Master's home.

The longer he's away, the worse his dreams became. He wondered if they would reflect his expected punishment if- when his Master found him again.

When the girls went silent, suddenly, it jarred Fenris out of his thoughts and made him look up from his work. Hector was already holding up a warning hand. The animals had gone quiet as well, the jungle unnaturally still and punctuated by the sound of running water and creaking trees.

The silence was shattered by an earth-rattling splash and one of the girls screaming, and Fenris took off at a run toward them, bare feet sloshing through the muddy water as he and Hector rounded the bend and found the source of danger:

Asaara was backed up against a tree, brandishing her harvesting knife, and Aban was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the water, and a huge tract of the riverbank, were occupied by the coiling form of an enormous serpent, so long that Fenris could not see where it's tail ended, and as thick around as he was tall. Fenris reached abortively for a sword that was not at his back, and wished suddenly for the weight of his armor.

Hector moved further into the water, splashing and yelling to draw the beast's attention from Asaara. The snake moved its gigantic, green, head, huge yellow eyes shifting to the older man, flicking the thick, black, fork of its tongue in his direction. 

“Run to camp!” Hector called to Asaara, and she shook her head, shivering against the tree. “We can't save her alone! Go!” He commanded and Fenris realised that Aban hadn't disappeared at all. 

She was inside the snake

Its huge head panned from Hector's splashing and yelling to Asaara's fleeing form, then back again. Its eyes didn't seem to move in their sockets, giving the creature a field of vision limited to the angle of its head. Fenris was unmoving and practically invisible where he stood; armed only with his harvesting knife.

Frozen, he considered his choices: He could run back to a Tevinter encampment, risk being killed in the woods by some other beast in the process. His master had probably already begun searching for him at every port and would either reward him for returning or punish him for having gone missing in the first place; likely the latter, given the absence of his sword and armor. 

Death might be preferable to the punishment he would receive. This creature would likely spell his end, and still could not be as terrifying as the prospect of returning to his master after so long an absence. 

The choice was easy.

Fenris flung himself at the creature, knife held high as its head turned to face its new aggressor. Forked tongue flicking black and inky through the air, the snake released a rumbling hiss before pulling its massive body into an S like curve and striking out, faster than a creature of its size had any right to be, the jaws snapping open and prepared to engulf Fenris just as he rolled to the side, dragging his makeshift weapon against the side of its head. The blade skipped across the first several scales, and scratched between the rest, bloodless, the hide too thick for the knife to do more than graze the beast. Fenris wished uselessly for the weight of his sword, or another weapon heavy and sharp enough to break the snake's skin. 

There was one option available to him, painful, and likely suicidal…

Fenris grit his teeth and let the mana inside him flare, allowing the vicious heat to burn across his skin as he phased into immaterial light and energy and leapt at the creature, feeling the sickening shift of his own form through scales and skin and muscle, into the darkness of it's belly. 

The thing thrashed when he re-materialised, the hiss louder from inside. Dark, wet, and squeezing, Fenris choked on the smell and decided then that not breathing would be preferable for the moment. The mana thudding through him, he phased again, this time forcing the energy outward.

Light flooded his vision once more, blood-tainted water flooding everything else, Fenris exploded through the side of the creature as his own body displaced the snake's larger one. He had no knowledge of the thing's anatomy, but the wound was large enough that he could guess at its potential for lethality.

The snake thrashed, a guttering hiss as it rolled and flexed in pain, twitching as its blood pulsed out of the gaping fissure in it's body, soaking Fenris in bright crimson. 

Nearby, splashing through the water, Fenris turned to see Hector, flanked by Asaara and the hunters that had gone out that same morning, spears at the ready. Saba, standing tall amongst them, broke away and approached the stilling corpse, looking to Fenris with a kind of grim hope. 

"She is still inside?" Saba asks, and Fenris nods.

The Qunari trailed his hands up the beast's throat, eyes closed. Saba took three steps, then four, before stopping. The spear was a stabbing weapon, though, not a cutting one, and even as Saba thrust his weapon into the thing's body, Fenris was stepping forward, letting the lyrium along his arms ignite as he pressed forward, phasing through the beast's hide with a few quick motions that ripped it wide. 

Aban spilled out into his arms, shivering despite the sweltering jungle around them and covered in slippery bile. 

"You're okay." He heard himself say, and suddenly more splashing came thundering toward him, Asaara rushing forth to seize her twin with a shuddering sob and shaking words in Qunlat and the language of the Fog Warriors.

He felt eyes on the back of his skull, then. Blue and boring into him. But when he turned around to confront their owner, he found only her kin, slapping his back and thanking him.


End file.
